MoviePass Acquires First Movie for New Distribution Venture

As this year’s Sundance Film Festival began, MoviePass, which offers unlimited monthly movie tickets to customers for an impossibly low price, announced they were about to get into the movie distribution business. Don’t ask me why, or how it will boost their profits, but they claim they’re going to “share in the upside” of driving customers to theaters. True to their word, they’ve announced their first acquisition. MoviePass Ventures is now officially a thing.

Via press release, the company says they’ve partnered with The Orchard (the distributor behind indies like What We Do in the Shadows, BPM, and Life, Animated), to acquire the Sundance film American Animals. Here’s the official Sundance plot description:

Lexington, Kentucky, 2004: Spencer and Warren dream of remarkable lives beyond their middle-class suburban existence. They head off to colleges in the same town, haunted by the fear they may never be special in any way. Spencer is given a tour of his school’s incredibly valuable rare book collection and describes it all to Warren. Suddenly, it hits them—they could pull off one of the most audacious art thefts in recent history, from the university’s special collections library. Convinced they can get away with it, they recruit two other friends. Suddenly, the dance of knowing what happens if they cross the line becomes all-consuming.

Here’s what MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe said about the news:

We're proud to partner with The Orchard, a distributor we respect a great deal, on our first co-acquisition deal. We're open for business and look forward to supporting our other distributor partners in acquiring great content, utilizing efficient P&A spends, and ensuring strong performance in the theatrical window and participating in downstream revenues as a result of strong box office performance.

So I guess they bring MoviePass customers into the theater to see American Animals, who tell their friends to see it, and then they all buy American Animals Blu-rays, and American Animals collector’s cups, and American Animals footed pajamas. According to Deadline, The Orchard and MoviePass paid $3 million for the film. No announcement yet when the film will be in theaters, but I imagine if you have a MoviePass app on your phone, it will alert you when it’s coming soon.